


Not So Very Noble

by irene_doe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Co-workers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Liberal Fantasy White House AU, M/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, Modern Steve Rogers, Politics AU, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, War Veteran Bucky Barnes, White House AU, White House Press Team AU, Workplace Relationship, meet ugly, shrinkyclinks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 17:56:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19978168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irene_doe/pseuds/irene_doe
Summary: Steve Rogers is living the dream; he is absolutely not a disaster. His hard work paid off and he is a  junior member of  President Maria Hill's communications team with his best friend.  Steve has a DC studio apartment with a view; well, it has windows. He has an iPad full of regency romances, a phone full of dating apps (more  aspirational than practical), and a desperate unrequited love for his co-worker, Bucky Barnes.





	Not So Very Noble

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged it "meet ugly," but Bucky and Steve have worked together for about a year before this particular incident. More of a meet ugly for Steve and the reader, really.

**Chapter One: Sacrificing Your Dignity at the Altar of Norovirus**  


  
Being sick in a foreign country unequivocally sucks. You don’t know the equivalent of a 24 hour CVS or Walmart, you’re reliant on sketchy Google translated web pages or travel blog posts (all of which appear to be from seven years ago for some unknown reason), and you feel like shit. Being sick in a foreign country while on work is utter misery. When that work is for the President of the United States and that illness feels like a sudden onset of food poisoning…death would be a welcome embrace. 

I am supposed to hand deliver some notes to my boss, the Press Secretary, after the president and the Dutch prime minister pose for pictures and take a few questions form a press spray gathered in what appears to be a _ballroom_ from a regency era romance novel. I want to check them for accuracy, but the printed text swims before my eyes while I try to breathe through my mouth and keep the nausea at bay. I shift my gaze to solid point in the middle distance, some statue of a hero or a despot holding a spear. The room is scattered with a few similar statues. Various reporters mill about in what is increasingly blending into gentle undulations of shadow. I desperately focus my gaze on the point of the spear and pray that Secretary Jones shows up to take the notes from me immediately, so I can go back to the hotel. Or, failing that, we are all swallowed in an apocalyptic terror plot/meteor.  
  
“What are you thinking about so intently?” Bucky Barnes, my unfairly attractive colleague asks when he finds me allowing a limestone column to prop me up.  
  
“Notes for the … thing.” 

“Wow. Thing? Like the pool spray on the International Protective Statute? That “thing?” We sure do hire the best and brightest around here, Rogers.”  
In addition to being unfairly attractive, Bucky Barnes is unfairly mean, just an asshole generally, and to me specifically. He’s been on the comms team for a few years. He was a Marine before an IED stole his arm and his military career. He’s the face of StarkTech’s new line of experimental prosthetics. He is rude, direct, and demanding; and most days, I want to climb him like a tree and never come down.  
“Barnes,” I say wincing as the tightness of my stomach suddenly shifts dangerously. “Please.” I’m not sure exactly what I planned to follow up with but the accompanying whine was not it. Barnes shifts into my direct line of sight. The light of the room plays with the hues of his hair and, distracted, I try to analyze the various shades.   
“Did you and Barton go to that Absinthe bar last night? I told you that shit hasn’t even been the real stuff in like a decade.” Barnes goes on with a steady stream of words that sounds a lot like he thinks Clint Barton and I are idiots when left to our own devices. Clint and I have been friends since high school and Barnes is possibly not 100% wrong in his assessment of us.  
My _Dear God, don’t let me vomit in front of the international news media_ prayer, shifts abruptly to _Holy Sweet Baby Jesus, do not let me shit my khakis in front of my hot co-worker._ __  
I shove my notes for Secretary Jones at his chest forcefully, briefly think _Fuck me, that is A Chest,_ because no matter how sick I feel, my whole life has been a giant dry spell. I choke out some sounds that roughly translate to “bathroom.”  
  
Barnes catches on when he sees my full body shudder and my hand clamp to my mouth in confusion, because the urge to vomit is suddenly back, but the lower back cramping has not abated. He props me up with one of his massive shoulders and steers me through the crowd to the hallway. The bathrooms here are typically lovely (very clean, very European) and within 60 seconds of entering it, I have defiled this particular one for at least a generation. It feels as though someone has gripped my insides and is twisting, like an empty toothpaste tube you just know you can wring more out of, but its spewing from both ends.  
  
Both ends.  
  
In the end, it didn’t matter that I made it to the toilet in time, because I still yakked all over my shoes. I had a violent full body vomit fest while shitting out my liquified innards _noisily_ in front of the stupidly attractive star of all my dirtiest day dreams. And my warm- fuzzy- cuddle fantasies… Bucky Barnes is the star of just all my sad little lonely touch-starved horndog wishes. And he is standing on the other side of the stall door where he can clearly hear and see bile splatter the ground and coat my shoes while listening to my butt release what honestly feels to be mostly hot acid.  
I don’t know how long it takes him to abandon ship and find Barton, but by the time I am certain I’ve been wrung dry and am just a shivering mess of snot, tears, and cold sweat on top of a Dutch toilet, tipped askew to lean my forehead against the side of the stall, he’s there and Barnes is long fucking gone. _So much for a noble war hero,_ I think sourly.  
  
“Hey Boo-boo,” Clint says softly through the door. “I have two solid exit strategies which both suck for you and sacrifice your dignity at the altar of Norovirus, and one that will require breaking some security protocols and nudity on your part.”  
  
“Barton, not the fucking ceiling,” I growl. Clint _always_ suggests escaping any situation via ductwork or elevator shafts; he went through a phase during an impressionable age (*cough* 15 *cough*) where he watched almost exclusively heist movies. He even kept a now defunct blog called Sea’s 10 where he tracked his progress, reviewed, and created an increasingly specific tagging system for each film he watched.  
  
“You’re lucky I love you enough to not take issue with your tone, Steven. A decade of friendship,” he grumbles. “Okay, so I can get you clothes from the hotel to change into, which will probably take an hour to get and then get back through security and at some point I’ll have to explain why I’m smuggling pants to you -- quite possibly to Maria Hill, our boss, President of our hearts AND our United States. Or --and I really hope you’ll consider this option-- we get you an ambulance and they wrap you in all those lovely little emergency blankets before rushing you out of here and getting like a crucial amount of fluids back into you, because--”  
“NO.”  
“Steve--”  
“I am not causing an international incident, because I ate some bad food.”  
“Dude--”  
“I refuse!”  
“Too late, Rogers. I’ve got Sam out front waiting for the ambulance.” It’s Barnes. I groan in frustration, even as his feet appear next to Clint's under the stall door. I admire the sheen of the overhead lighting bouncing off his leather oxford shoes, and note that my usual annoyance at the man's perfection is still absent. The only explanation: I am probably dying.  
"You aren't dying, calm down," he says.   
Unbelievable.  
“Well, cancel and reassign Sam to getting my pants.”  
“Yeah right. A member of the President’s communication team falls suddenly and violently ill at an international conference? There’s no covering this up or sneaking out. You’re going to need monitoring and blood work.”  
“For what!?” I screech as I watch those perfect leather oxfords leave my line of sight.   
I hear the bathroom door open and close, so Clint answers for Barnes, “I don’t want to be alarmist, but … biological warfare?”

  
The excellent Dutch emergency response team is quick and thorough; unfortunately, that means they need easy access to my wrecked body. So, no, there are no delightful little emergency blankets to cover up my vomit soaked pants.  
“Could be worse,” Clint says as he walks beside the stretcher and acts as an escort, along with (to my unending shame) Secret Service agents. “You could have prioritized your vomit and then shit your pants.”  
A choking snort from a blonde, Dutch man-child currently wheeling my prone body, steals my attention and when I turn to glare at him, I see that Barnes, MIA since informing us he’d made the call about my exit strategy, is biting his lip trying to hold back a massive fucking grin. His eyes are _watery with mirth. T_ hat absolute prick.  
“Barnes, I hate everything about you.”  
"Likewise, doll," he quips.   
  



End file.
